I continue to dream about work despite being retired for over a decade. It’s weird. Last night, I dreamed that I was the Internal Medicine resident on call at the hospital where I trained decades ago. That hospital is gone, by the way – replaced by one more modern and associated with a medical school that did not exist in my day.
In my dream, the ER was no longer where it had been when I was in training. It looked different, and it had an ICU-like unit attached to it. I showed up there because I had been summoned to see a patient. When I arrived, I realized that I didn’t have my stethoscope – causing me more than a bit of distress.
I don’t remember much more about this dream, but it was more of a frustrating recollection of my distant past than an actual nightmare. It certainly incorporated a number of things from my current reality – a lost stethoscope and a foreign ER layout for one.
During my daily activities, I do not miss my former work routines. I do not miss the ER. I do not miss most of the things that are included in my dreams except for the bathroom. I seem to never be able to find the damn bathroom!